Skybound Energon Universe @ NYCC 2024 w/ Off The Cuff Tom

If you haven’t followed the ENERGON UNIVERSE, you are doing yourself a disservice! Get out and pick up something! This is one of the best-integrated storylines out there right now outside of “THE BIG 2.”

Starting off with the one and only Robert Kirkman

NI: Because it’s so big, and we have so many Transformers already in Void Rivals, when will we start seeing some Joe’s showing up?

RK: Starting with Void Rivals 13, we’re going to see Pythona and some of the royal guard appearing in the Void Rivals series and interacting with those characters. That’s when the GI JOE side of the universe makes its way into Void rivals and we’re able to do that because there’s no reason these giant creature vehicles that the Cobra-La people have aren’t spaceworthy and we established in Josh and Andrea Milanas Cobra commander miniseries, that Cobra-La is aware of Cybertron and aware of the existence of the Transformers and they find their technological existence and a front to their organic way of life, so they’re very concerned with them, and so they send Pythona and a team of royal guard out into space to investigate like the origins of the Transformers and what their plans might be and how dangerous they may be to Cobra-La and that’s going to lead to them interacting with all kinds of cool stuff, so it’s going to be a lot of fun. 

Over land, sea, and air, GI JOE IS THERE! With Joshua Williamson & Tom Reilly

NI: With so many iterations of Joe’s over how many years, what will make yours stand out from the rest?

JW: We’re approaching it from a very different point of view, right? The fact that the part of the origin point starts in Transformers. I always feel like storytelling sometimes is like you’re looking at this giant pond. And then every once in a while, you gotta throw rocks in that pond, and they see where the ripples go and how it changes the story and changes the world and to me. If you look at Gi Joe as this pond that you love, what’s been around a really long time. Now we’re throwing big ass rocks into that water, and then we’re seeing where those ripple effects take place, you know, so it’s like you throw in void rivals, you throw Transformers in there, and then you look at the fact that like, oh, we threw Cobra-La. We made all these really conscious to make it part of the origin. We didn’t want to start with BOOM JOES VS COBRA!

JW: Even with GI JOE #1 coming out, it’s gonna be a while because when you said,”Oh, you know, it’s all coming together,”. I feel like we’re still at the beginning. No, we’re still in the very beginning, so it will be a long time before you see THE JOES. When you look at the first episode of the cartoon, the way that cartoon was so established Joes versus Cobra, it’s going to be a long time before we really get to that. If you look at Dana Williams Johnson’s Transformers, we are trying to do that with GI JOE.

JW: You know, when these characters meet for the first time, it’s gonna be a minute before you even see Corba Commander. We’re taking time to keep it all separate.

TR: To respect anybody else, you look at the Transformers book, and it’s like there is no Transformers book. You can point to me; it looks like what Dana William Johnson did. That book was amazing. You know, respect where it came from, but you can tell with just one look. It’s different, new, and modern. That’s what we’re still trying to bring in with GI JOE. 

TR: Yeah, it is. There’s a visual component too, to make everything stand out because there’s so much great art from the toy packaging to the comics to the TV shows stuff. Creating a visual identity for the GI JOE in this universe is a fun challenge, and just draw! Things may be the way you wouldn’t have seen them drawn before, and just come up with fun new takes that people may like, people may not like, you never know.

As far as Larry Hama, Larry is the Master. It’s in his soul; we won’t tread on that either!

Finally, Rolling out with the Transformers with Jorge Corona and Sean Mackiewicz

NI: What has been harder when drawing the Transformers? The Scale or The Detail?

JC: I think, in my case, it would be the scale. We’ve mostly been dealing with what they are about, sort of those subject accounts, but in their full form, they interact with each other, like some of the background differences in scale. Now, when you have humans, it’s keeping track of how many heads tall this and that are. So, the story has been written away and is easy to navigate. Now we’re in Volume 3, we’re getting to some urban areas that I’m like, “Oh, I need to put them next to a building! Yeah, it’s like there’s a human, there’s a villain, there’s a horse!”

SW: In terms of detail, I think this, this specifically, this Transformers, has been such a kind of like a love story to that generation, one design and visual that means to keep the look of the actual art, like modern, without necessarily having to rely on suddenly modernizing the tech. 

JC: So we have rooms here to play with like, okay, I’m incorporating some a little bit more complexity, but you still recognize the shapes of that, going back to the first cartoon that you know, it’s bulky, and I little type of things. It’s just about the character’s general shape and weight, but it’s been really tough to figure it out. 

With three very unique but parallel and crisscrossing storylines, Skybound is taking these franchises we absolutely love and giving us a brand new take as we have honestly never seen and sticking to it! Make sure to come back to Nerd Initiative as we cover all the books in the ENERGON UNIVERSE and all the CONtent from New York Comic Con 2024!